[This Lordship Business]: Seeking Whom He May Exasperate, 12/?, Harry/Theo

[lomonaaeren]

“And you think that you’re ready to enchant the tridents?”

Harry nods and considers the wooden practice trident laid out in front of him. The merfolk queen has stayed in communication with him since last term via Isidore Ramath, who has merfolk heritage and is in his seventh year now. The trident in front of him is the most responsive to his magic yet, maybe because it’s made of holly wood. “Do you want me to enchant one for the queen?”

Isidore hesitates so long that Harry looks up at him. The boy bites his lip and looks at the trident for a long moment. Then he says, “My only hesitation, my lord, is that I don’t dare offer an inferior gift to my queen.”

“And this might not work.”

“Um. Yes, my lord.”

Harry smiles at him. “It’s okay. We’ll try it, and you can practice with it a little. I know that you told me last year that you had enough merfolk heritage to wield an enchanted trident, if you ever had one.”

“Yes, my lord. But I’m only part Mermish. I don’t know if I deserve to wield it.”

“Just think of it as a test,” Harry says, letting his hand rest on the holly wood. They’re in a study room that belongs to Isidore deep in the dungeons, but some of his people aren’t far away. They never are when he’s technically alone with someone who’s not part of his inner circle. “If it doesn’t work properly, then you’ve done your part to protect your queen.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Harry nods and closes his eyes. For a moment, his magic thrums through his body. He’ll be doing something to the trident that’s a bit similar to the web of trust that he worked to establish with Regulus. But in this case, it’s more concentrated, and it’s going into a single piece of wood.

“What are we doing?”

“I’m enchanting a trident for the merfolk queen,” Harry says, opening his eyes again. At least he hasn’t begun the process of enchantment yet. Ahalam is looped around his right arm, studying the hand Harry has resting on the trident. “Please be quiet, since I’m not sure what will happen if I’m interrupted.”

“But I can help.”

Harry blinks. “You can? The magic that I’m using isn’t based on Parseltongue or anything like that.”

Ahalam turns and darts his tongue out at Harry. “Smart and pretty snakes can not only help with magic that’s based on Parseltongue.”

Harry decides not to point out that he had no way of knowing that. “Then what do you think you can help with?”

“Put me on the trident.”

Harry does, curious, but not worried. He really doesn’t think that they can harm the trident, at least not without someone finding out before it gets into the hands of the queen. And in the meantime, any experiment might manage to give them something new. “All right, what do you want to do now?”

Ahalam sways back and forth in response, his tongue darting out again and again. Then he says, “Now I will sing.”

And before Harry can ask what he means, he tilts his head back and darts his tongue out again. With it comes a little warble of perfect music.

Phoenix song.

“Oh,” Isidore gasps.

Harry feels like doing the same thing, but he can’t take his eyes from Ahalam, who’s coiling around the trident and swaying his head back and forth in a way that really is a dance to the music. He supposes this must be some gift from Fawkes, from their courtship, but Harry certainly never anticipated it.

The warble turns into a trill, and Harry can nearly see the notes sinking into the wood. Ahalam finishes his coiling and rests his head against the nearest of the trident’s points. Then he sings again.

This is a harder, brighter note, and it brings a response immediately. Fawkes appears in midair and hovers there, his own song joining Ahalam’s. Harry can feel the tug on his magic as the bird and the snake sing together, and he reckons that his bond to Ahalam is somehow helping them enchant the trident.

Fawkes finally flutters down to perch on the chair behind the table and droops a little. Ahalam unwinds himself from the trident. Harry holds out his arm, but Ahalam climbs up the chair and coils himself around Fawkes’s feet instead.

Trying not to feel like a parent abandoned by his child, Harry turns to Isidore. “Do you know how you’ll tell that the trident works?”

“Not exactly. Um. Only the legends tell us what we were supposed to be able to do with them, my lord.”

“Well, pick that one up and see if you can cast a spell with it, the way you would with a wand.”

Isidore slowly reaches out, as if he thinks that the trident’s going to bite him, and heaves it into his hand. A sharp spark of red magic travels along the edge of the points. Hary thinks that it’s the color of Fawkes’s feathers.

“All right,” Isidore says, as if reassuring himself against the complaints of someone else. “All right.”

He turns and points the trident at the far wall. Harry isn’t sure what he says, if anything at all, but he certainly feels the moment when the magic in the room changes. It’s suddenly thick and cold and vibrating, as if they’re underwater.

The trident flashes a white light at the far wall. Harry stares at the scorch mark that it leaves, and nods a little. “What kind of spell did you try to cast?”

“One that boils the water around our enemies. That—we haven’t been able to cast since Merlin took our power away.”

Isidore sounds somewhere between frightened and joyful. He drops the trident to the floor with a clang. Harry leans forwards, studying it, and isn’t entirely surprised to see that metal has replaced the holly wood. Somehow, he thinks that he should have expected that.

“Do you want to take this one to the queen?”

“I don’t know…I handled it.”

“And? We agreed that you would do that to make sure it was safe for her.”

“But she might think that she should have been the first one to take it and cast a spell with it.”

From the way that Isidore is staring at his hands, he’s caught up in fear more than joy. Harry restrains his impatience and the temptation to remind Isidore that this was a test they agreed to. It doesn’t matter. The important thing is that they have a trident that Harry thinks is fit for the merfolk queen. “I’ll take full responsibility.”

“What?”

“If it doesn’t work or hurts her or something. I’ll take responsibility.”

Isidore clenches his hands, and then nods. “I know that she’ll value the gift even if it doesn’t work and you need to make another one, my lord.”

“Good.” Harry pats Isidore’s shoulder and then turns to look at Ahalam. “Are you coming back over here any time soon, or do you and Fawkes need some privacy for your courtship?”

“You do not need to sound sarcastic. Pretty snakes do not need sarcasm.” Ahalam raises his head and nudges Fawkes under the chin for a moment, winding through his breast feathers in a gesture so intimate that Harry looks away with his face burning. When he turns back. Ahalam is weaving back and forth, waiting to be picked up. “We do need cheese.”

“No cheese.”

“I have just enchanted a whole trident.”

Harry considers that, and then nods with a sigh. “Fine. You can have cheese. But only one small piece.”

“Two small pieces.”

“One and a half.”

“Two.”

“One and a half.”

“Two.”

“That’s not the way bargaining works, Ahalam. You’re supposed to offer smaller things and meet in the middle. Compromise. Not just insist on having the thing that you want and not asking for anything else.”

“But I wish to have two pieces of cheese. Why would I ask for anything else?”

Sometimes, Harry reflects, he doesn’t know whether Ahalam really is smart as a human being or not. He might be smarter. He’s certainly more sensible.

“All right, two.”

“I knew you would see common sense. Sometimes you do.”

*

Harry envisioned something quiet to give the enchanted trident to the merfolk queen, especially since he knows that Dumbledore doesn’t think handing the merfolk enchanted weapons is a wise idea at all. But somehow, it’s turned into a procession, with Ahalam coiled on his shoulder, Fawkes fluttering overhead, Isidore marching in front of him with the trident ceremoniously laid across his hands, Gwen walking behind him, and Theo at his side with a small smile.

And behind Gwen walk Ron and Hermione and Blaise and Susan and Justin and Zacharias and most of his other followers still in school. Showering them with sparks and tooted tunes on a conjured horn are Fred and George.

Hermione threatened to take the horn away, which made them cower with pretended terror.

I suppose it’s appropriate, in a way, Harry thinks as they stop on the lakeshore. Being Lord Slytherin involves a lot more noise and chaos than I would have thought it did.

He walks up to the edge of the water and nods to Isidore. To his astonishment, the Slytherin nods back to him and offers the trident.

“What? But didn’t you want to present it to her?”

Isidore recoils without moving. “My lord, I would never pretend to any sort of equality with my queen. She’s my queen.”

“But I can’t pretend to any equality with her, either. I’m just Lord Slytherin.”

“Just,” Theo says, not far enough under his breath to make it inaudible. Harry thinks about punching him in the arm.

“But—surely you can’t mean for me to present it to her.”

“Why not?”

“Because Ahalam and Fawkes enchanted it, not me! And I’m someone she’s made an alliance with, but I don’t have the blood of her people in me, like you do.”

“You’ll have to make a decision soon,” Theo cuts in, and nods towards the lake, which is churning with blue and green colors Harry hasn’t seen before. “Because I think she’s about to arrive.”

Harry hastily grabs the trident and turns towards the water. Isidore is shoving his hands behind his back, and Harry doesn’t want to embarrass him.

Or turn this into a moment of farce, either, honestly, for all that he thought they were agreed on Isidore presenting it to her.

The water foams near the lakeshore like something being boiled, and then a gleaming seashell surges up from it. The seashell is blinding white, making the merfolk queen seated in the middle and the green robe she’s wrapped in all the brighter in contrast. She inclines her head gravely in Harry’s direction and holds out a bracelet with a sparkling stone, like one Harry received before. It’ll let him understand Mermish.

And breathe underwater, too, although he doubts he’ll need that right now.

Harry reaches out and clasps the bracelet around his arm. The horn behind him soars to a frantic screech that abruptly stops. Harry doesn’t turn around to look, but he assumes Hermione finally fulfilled her threat.

“You’re ready to receive the trident, Your Majesty?” Harry asks softly.

She replies, her voice cool and brilliant in the Mermish language instead of the screeches he’d been half-afraid he would hear. “Yes, of course. You have done well.”

“I should note, in the interests of accuracy, that Fawkes and Ahalam enchanted it.”

“I know of Ahalam, but who is Fawkes?”

The phoenix takes that moment to flutter down and land on Harry’s shoulder, cooing softly. Harry staggers at the unexpected weight and braces himself on Theo’s arm. For some reason he thought Fawkes would be light, like he was made of fire, but apparently he’s been eating stones for breakfast.

The mer-queen stares at the phoenix with bright eyes for a long moment, and then says, “Oh.”

Harry recovers his balance, nods his thanks to Theo, and holds out the trident. “Your Majesty, please accept this as a gift from Lord Slytherin.” There are no formal words for something like this, as far as he knows, but he’ll take what he can get.

The mer-queen carefully accepts the trident, cradling it across her hands. When she looks up, there’s a brilliant smile on her face. Then she reverses her grip and stabs the trident into the water as if into solid earth.

Harry watches as the water all around her turns brilliant red and gold. Fawkes croons. Harry supposes that it’s a sort of acknowledgment of the phoenix and his fire, as far as the merfolk can imitate that.

The queen blinks, hard. Harry swallows. He almost hopes that she isn’t holding back tears. It’s going to be hard to look her in the face if she is.

“Thank you,” the queen whispers. “For your kindness and generosity.”

Harry shakes his head. “I’m only restoring what my kind took from you without purpose.”

“There was a purpose to it,” the queen murmurs, stroking the trident for a moment. “But it was a purpose founded in pain and fear, and not in shared good.” She lifts her head and smiles for a long moment at Harry. “Thank you. I will grant you one boon, if you like.”

“Could I get a few more bracelets that would let people breathe underwater and speak Mermish? That would be brilliant.”

“That’s all you want?”

“Yeah.”

“Think carefully about your boon, Lord Slytherin. Once you ask it of me by that name, I must grant it, but I won’t grant any others, even if you ask, unless I can prove that it won’t cost my people anything.”

“Then I’ll ask that you live in peace with us, as much as you can.” Harry steps up to the edge of the lake and looks the queen in the eyes, ignoring the mumbles of some of the other merfolk who’ve come to the surface behind her. “I won’t take away your ability to defend yourselves, since you might need it, but try to ask and observe first instead of attacking. And it would be nice if we got some bracelets as part of that, since it would mean that people could visit you in the lake and understand you better.”

The queen’s still for a long moment, and Harry wonders if he went too far, asked for too much. But then she smiles and extends her hand down to him. “It’s a pleasure to speak with a human truly committed to peace, Lord Slytherin.”

Harry shakes her hand, and she slides a few more bracelets out from what seems to be thin air and down her arm to him. Harry takes them and smiles. “Thank you. I hope that we can enchant other tridents for your people, too.”

“Now that we have one, we can study the making of them. We would prefer to provide our own.”

The queen’s voice is polite, but firm. Harry nods. “Okay.”

“And that’s all?”

“Well, you said that you wanted to do it yourselves. I suppose I’ll offer help if you ask for it. That’s all.”

The queen tosses her head back and laughs, a bright, trilling sound that makes some of the others behind her laugh as well. Then she turns and dives into the water from the seashell. The shell dissolves in a rush of foam and bubbles and crashes against the shore.

The merfolk still on the surface sing to Harry, too, a sound that tugs gently at his mind and leaves a huge impression of friendship as they sink. Not even ripples mar the surface now.

Harry sands staring after them for a moment, then realizes Fawkes is still on his shoulder and nudges him. “Hey. That’s Ahalam’s place.”

Fawkes warbles at him impudently, but jumps up and into the air. He’s barely flown back towards the castle when Theo tenses next to Harry, and Harry turns around. His gaze follows Theo to the figure striding furiously from the castle.

Harry sighs.

“Harry Potter,” Dumbledore says between clenched teeth. “To my office immediately.”

“Why, sir? I don’t think there’s any school rule against making friends with the merfolk or giving them enchanted tridents.”

Theo’s the one who speaks, leaning back against air and dropping his hands into his pockets. Harry nudges him a little. He’s seen Theo stand like that before, and he knows it means his boyfriend is right on the verge of drawing his wand.

“You must know what you have done.”

“Yes. Given the mer-queen an enchanted trident.”

Dumbledore leans closer, and his face is furious in a way that Harry’s never seen. He falls an unconscious step backwards, and then wishes he hadn’t, because that’s Theo’s signal to move forwards. And, for that matter, Susan’s signal to aim her wand at the Headmaster’s back.

“Come on, you lot,” Harry says. “Stop that.”

“He’s threatening you,” Susan says.

“I can think of at least two laws he’s breaking right now,” Justin says cheerfully, but with rage of his own lurking in the back of his smile. “You, on the other hand, haven’t broken any school rules, let alone laws.”

Dumbledore probably isn’t frightened of them, but he’s probably thinking about the scene he might cause. He takes a deep breath and a step away at the same time. “Please come to my office, Lord Slytherin,” he says, the words falling between his teeth like ice cubes. “We have much to discuss.”

“That’s better,” Harry says, and walks towards the school with Theo at his side.

He knows that Theo will be going with him to Dumbledore’s office. If the Headmaster has a problem with that, he’ll have to get over it.

Harry has no problem with that. He just thinks he’s lucky to have such fiercely protective friends.

And what can he do but give them his fiercest loyalty in return?